An early Xmas?

Not very X-mas like at my current place of residence, but there are just so many good things coming to the FreeGamer enthusiast right now! But I am short on time and on a crappy internet connection... so only text for you guys tonight :p

So, as a follow up the the recently mentioned Alpha 0.3 release of 0AD and their donation drive, UbuntuGamer has now published a pretty nice interview with one of the 0AD contributors.

Their donation drive is also still running, so if you have some money to spare, head over here. They are still a long way from the target, so don't be shy :)

ZeroBallistics 2.0

So why is there an early X-mas? Well I just got the hot news that there has been a 2.0 release of the ZeroBallistics FOSS game!!! Definity some nice new features, but have a look at their release announcement yourself here.

War§ow 0.6 and AlienArena2011

Two pretty big releases also, but since I always get snubbed a bit for mentioning these games with non-FOSS media around here I will make it short: War§ow 0.6 (BIG and very nice release) and AlienArena2011 (now with ODE physics for rag-dolls).

Two FOSS gems

Ok today I have updates for two real FOSS gems. First of all the long promised update on ZeroBallistics: the former indi, now FOSS tank shooter. A few weeks ago thy made all the game (including even .blend model source files!) available under the GPLv2 (and the media also under CC-BY-SA) so even the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts will be pleased :)

After some trouble compiling it (more on that later) I made a nice game-play video today (sorry for the low frame-rate, but my PC wasn't quite up to the task):

ZeroBallistics game-play

Pretty neat, isn't it? The developers are currently looking into getting their master-server and website back up running soon, but are also looking for more people to help them out!

There is especially one problem that needs to be solved however: Currently it still depends on the un-free Raknet3 for networking, so it's not possible to distribute GPL binaries. There is an older GPL version of Raknet2 which could be maybe used (we talked about it earlier), but it has its far share of problems too (f.e. broken 64bit support). Another project recently replaced it with their own enet wrapper, so maybe that could be also used. So if you know your coding, get into contact with the ZeroBallistics developers ASAP!

Summoning Wars 0.5.2 released

Speaking of Summoning Wars, they have just released their new version now with music and sounds (at least partially). Check out the game yourself (available for Linux, Windows or Mac)!

Edit: Here is a small video showing some features:

Summoning Wars game-play

But for those that like more eye-candy, the next version with terrain system will for sure make you look again. Besides with upcoming new player models like this, it will for sure look even greater soon.

Assorted FPS news

Lets start with the big news for today :)

A new version of Cube2:Sauerbraten was released today: Justice Edition!

Changes include two new player-models, 30 new maps, a mini radar and the new hold and efficiency game modes. For a full change log click here.

The blue base!

The new game mode "efficiency" gives you a set amount of ammunition and all weapons, and you can only "reload" when re-spawning and in the "hold" mode you get points when holding the flag for 30 seconds for your team

Upcoming changes in AlienArena

In this other open-source online arena FPS (sadly also with un-free media) some major changes in the rendering engine have been announced recently. Version 7.45 will include the new IQM skeletal animation format, which speeds up and increases the rendering quality tremendously on all somewhat new GPUs!

Furthermore changes to the shadowing code have been made:

Improved self shadowing

Edit (07/29/2010): 7.45 was released today, get it here.

ZeroBallistics completely FOSS???

Ok maybe I am jumping the gun here, but this interesting post has recently appeared on the Phoronix message-boards. It seems like the former commercial indi game Zero Ballistics (an unrealistic tank battle multiplayer game with pretty sweet graphics) has gone completely FOSS (GPL including the media and even the .blend model source files).

Zero Ballistics trailer

Details are a bit shady, as there was a post on the currently offline webpage about ZB going to be released for "free", but no mention of the exact licensing. However now a complete repository has appeared on the Sourceforge page (tagged as GPL), so speculations are that it is completely FOSS!

We are currently trying to confirm this with the authors listed at the sf.net page, but so far there was no response :( But lets wait and see!

Edit (07/29/2010): I can now confirm that ZeroBallistics is indeed completely FOSS :) Stay tuned for a more in depth preview here on FreeGamer.